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On this week's Bullseye, Jesse sits down with improv legends TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi at the inaugural Chicago Podcast Festival to discuss their improv methods and why the love Chicago. But first, musician John Cale talks to Jesse about his time in the Velvet Underground, his life as a producer for some of the most influential musicians in history, and a new reissue of his album Fragments of a Rainy Season. Plus new music from Split Single, solo project of Jason Narducy. Show notes

In the late 1970s and early 80s, NBC had a lot in common with...well, NBC today. The network was consistently behind in the ratings, with not a whole lot to lose. That might partially explain why a young executive named Warren Littlefield was able to approve a couple of shows that, on paper, didn’t look all that promising. One of them found itself with the lowest ratings in all of TV at the end of the first season. The other show was a family sitcom that ABC rejected, after executives there proclaimed that family sitcoms were dead. Not the best odds, right? But those two shows – Cheers and The Cosby Show, respectively – went on to become two of the most important sitcoms in television’s history, leading directly to the development of the Thursday night powerhouse that was Must-See TV.

Littlefield left NBC in 1998; since then, the network's fortunes have changed pretty dramatically and Must-See TV no longer exists for ANY channel. So Littlefield is taking a look back at NBC's glory years in an oral history called Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV, which was just released in paperback. Littlefield joins us to discuss how NBC's shows changed primetime, how the shows forged intimate connections with viewers, and the pleasures and sorrows of working with a pre-rehab Kelsey Grammer.

In Canonball, we take a flying leap into the canon of popular music. We're joined by professor and music writer Oliver Wang to talk about an Al Green album that deserves your attention. No, it's not Green's chart-topping record Let's Stay Together. Wang says that it was Al Green's followup to that album that really rattled him to his core.

Wang talks to us about 1973's I'm Still in Love with You, the record that created a new kind of soul music. Green's beautiful, if flawed voice, was merged with Willie Mitchell's innovative rhythm section and a new sound emerged.

You can find Oliver Wang's thoughts on soul rarities and more on his blog, Soul Sides.

Special thanks to Chris Berube, who edited Canonball for us this week.

Comments

I enjoyed the outshot for this episode. I enjoyed Where the Wild Things are as a child but I think I enjoy it on a different level now that I'm an adult (I also went to an art school and I am an illustrator interested in making children's illustrated books some day).

I've been catching up on my podcasts and just listened to this episode. Especially after the amazingly terrible week last week, Jesse's outshot really pierced me. I love "Where the Wild Things Are" and it's a staple in my kids' bedtime story library (ages 4 and 8), but Jesse's reading of it as an internal journey not for Max to escape his life but to plunge in and fully experience his feelings was beautiful. Thank you for providing a new facet and interpretation on this wonderful book, and thanks for making me cry during my lunchbreak :)